Upgrading 2013-2015 Macbook Pro SSD to M.2 NVMe

[macpro_mid2014]

Yeah, I haven't got to the point of the SSD being recognized yet.

WHAT IF? - I will try to install windows on the Mac with this new SSD, maybe there is a way? Does anyone know if it's possible?
AND - Once I have windows I make a virtual machine with macOS Mojave and upgrade that virtual to Catalina. Will that update my SSD firmware? Did anyone done this before? Is it doable?

Did you use this process to create the USB boot disk?

Create a bootable installer for macOS - Apple Support (CA)

You can use a USB flash drive or other secondary volume as a startup disk from which to install the Mac operating system. These steps are primarily for system administrators and other experienced users.

support.apple.com

The EFI 157.0.0.0 your computer is using is already a Bootrom from Catalina and it has to recognize the NVMe installed on your computer.

 

[xplainit_dk]

Macbook pro late 2013 - 16G RAM
Force MP510 - 2TB drive
Bootrom 160
Works, but when macbook drains to 5% and shuts down (writes the RAM to disk) (hibernate mode 3), I get dual chime and cold boot, when I try to start after connecting power. Sintech short adapter.

 

[cybazaar]

Late 2013 MacBook Pro Retina, 15-inch
Bootrom 1.6.0.0
macOS Catalina 10.15.5
Windows 10 Pro on Bootcamp

Installed Sabrent Rocket 2TB drive SB-ROCKET-2TB (the blue one) with the Sintech adapter. Install was easy following the information in this forum.

Used Carbon Copy Cloner and Winclone to backup the MacOS and Bootcamp partitions. However, to keep the OS/drive clean, ended up installing a fresh Catalina, and only restored data and applications from the CCC backup. Winclone failed to restore the Bootcamp partition. I kept getting a BOOT_DEVICE_INACCESSIBLE error that Winclone couldn't help resolve, so ended up installing fresh copy of Windows 10 Pro as well (which was easy).

Getting great speeds, 1318 MB/s write and 1355 MB/s read, more than double of what I had with the original Apple drive!

Of course, hibernation is an issue, so considering patching my bootrom, and have some questions:

1. Can I download the latest macOS Catalina installer on my own MacBook, and extract the donor firmware with the updated NVMe driver, or do I need a donor 2015 MacBook? (I don't understand why a donor 2015 MacBook might be necessary...)
2. After I patch my system ROM with the updated NVMe driver, would I need to repeat this process every time the stock Apple OS update changes the bootrom?
3. Where can I find a cheap J6100 adapter? All the ones I can find on Ebay are around $60, for a little flat cable!

Thanks in advance!

 

[cybazaar]

Since my J6100 Adapter was broken, I didn't want to spend another 50 Euros for a new one. I just bought a SOIC-Test-Clip for 5 Euros and successfully patched my 159.0.0.0.0, which was upgraded with 10.15.4 update even without original SSD.
I think there is no need buying the expensive cable, unless you are professional and patch BootROMs regularly.

I have a Mid 2014 15 inch MBP.

Does anybody know how I can avoid BootROM-Upgrades in the future without missing macOS Upgrades? Or do I have to re-patch every time a macOS Update comes.


View attachment 903171
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Hi, can you provide links to this clip/cable? How many pins does it have? I am surprised no one else is talking about this cheap solution compared to the $60 J6100 cable!

 

[goodfidelity]

I am thinking to try the sabrent rocket 1TB in my 2015 13” MBP.

Noticed there is two models. One blue, and one yellow/gold logo.

Will the E16 controller work, that is in the Golden stick SSD?

Does anyone know the difference here? What should i think of before buying this item?

Are there different models with different controllers?

Thanks for good info in this thread!

//GF

 

[Waughy]

Well I thought it was over before it began. Got my adaptor today, went to fit the drive to it, was a bit of a tight fit, and I didn't force it, heard a little crack. Took SSD out and had a look, was missing a capacitor from the bottom. When fitting it, the edge of the PCB of the adaptor caught the top edge of the cap and ripped it off. Thankfully I found it, and was able to resolder it, which took nearly an hour with the crappy iron I have, plus only having a Swiss Army knife magnifying glass to get a better view of what I was doing. I needed 3 hands, but got by. I do repairs like this as part of my job, so I've got the skills, if I had better equipment it would have been a walk in the park. I'm off work for a week, otherwise I would have waited until next week and done it there. Anyway, I got it back on, and it looks good enough to do the job. Fitted, and applied the heat sink that came with it. Drive is the Adata SX8200 Pro 512Gb.

Carbon Copy Clone backup carried out.
Original SSD removed and new one in, no problems there.
Boot holding CMD for USB boot from CCC backup.
New drive formatted.
Catalina installer run and installed to new drive. All went well.
Data transferred from CCC backup, and rebooted. Things are running well.
Carried out a speed test, decent improvement. x4 link width as shown in system report.
SMC reset.

I'll see how it goes over the next few weeks. So far I haven't seen anything out of the ordinary. Temps seem ok, the chassis is no warmer than usual, and the fan hasn't ramped up at all.

 

[goodfidelity]

Anyone knows if the Phison E18 E16 controller present in the new line of Sabrent rocket SSDs will work as good as previous generation?

Thanks for input if anyone did try!

//GF

 

[goodfidelity]

Hi there,

Thanks all for the very useful (if extremely long!) Thread.

Has anyone had any luck trying any of the pcie 4.0 phison e16 drives in macbooks?

I appreciate it probably wouldn't help the speed much when put in a pcie 2 or 3 host, but they might run cooler and with less battery impact when only running at the lower speeds?

Did you manage to get any insight on this? Does the newer (post E12) controllers work good in the Macbook pro 2015++ ?

Thanks for any advice, as i have good deal on the 1TB model but i am hesitant to buy since it is not the E12 controller chipset.

//GF

 

[Intenditore]

To those who are roaming Ali looking for a good adapter - I can trust this one https://aliexpress.ru/item/33027201181.html
3.0, 4 lanes, full speed. 3$ only!

I also have a question. I heard there's some news on hibernation and powerdraw on 2014 15" models, not sure, like there's some update or some particular ssd is now working well with them. Wiki post doesn't contain such info. Are there news for real or it's misleading?

 

[Audit13]

To those who are roaming Ali looking for a good adapter - I can trust this one https://aliexpress.ru/item/33027201181.html
3.0, 4 lanes, full speed. 3$ only!

I also have a question. I heard there's some news on hibernation and powerdraw on 2014 15" models, not sure, like there's some update or some particular ssd is now working well with them. Wiki post doesn't contain such info. Are there news for real or it's misleading?

I don't think anything has changed because people still have to re-flash the modded bootrom after installing an OS update.

 

[macpro_mid2014]

To those who are roaming Ali looking for a good adapter - I can trust this one https://aliexpress.ru/item/33027201181.html
3.0, 4 lanes, full speed. 3$ only!

I also have a question. I heard there's some news on hibernation and powerdraw on 2014 15" models, not sure, like there's some update or some particular ssd is now working well with them. Wiki post doesn't contain such info. Are there news for real or it's misleading?

I can confirm that my MBP 15 mid-2014 cannot use hibernatemode 25 without a cold restart. What they do is update the EFI Bootrom with a NVMe ssd installed. No need for Apple stock SSD anymore.

With these machines starting the Vintage/Obsolete phase, I doubt Apple would touch the NVMe thing in the bootrom.

 

[herb2k]

My experience for anyone doing this with a 2015 13" MBP Retina:

• Intel 660p (512GB, upgraded from 128GB)
• Catalina 10.15.5 Supplemental Update
• New Battery (Just replaced from Apple prior to SSD swap)

My board would not update BootRom, had to install Catalina to the stock SSD.

Hibernate (Mode 3 Default), works fine, no KPs.

Battery Drain:

• Default Settings (standbydelayhigh = 84000, standbydelaylow = 10800, tcpkeepalive=1)
  • Drain was between 60% and 40% overnight (~8hrs), depending on what applications are running.
  • Find my Mac ON
• Custom Settings (standbydelayhigh = 84000, standbydelaylow = 10800, tcpkeepalive=0)
  • Drain was 10% overnight (~8hrs)
  • Find my Mac OFF
• Custom Settings (standbydelayhigh = 7200, standbydelaylow = 3600, tcpkeepalive=0)
  • Drain was 2% overnight (~8hrs)
  • Find my Mac OFF

Same upgrade on my 2015 MacBook Air 1.6ghz, drain was approx 5% overnight (Default settings)

My Observations

• Overall Battery Runtime is 7-8hrs just browsing the web, brightness around 60%.
• MBP has tcpkeepalive=1 as a default (you can't shut it off, even by disabling Power Nap - so you need to set it to 0 using pmset -b tcpkeepalive 0)
• MBA has tcpkeepalive=0 as a default (always off, so the machine doesn't wake every 2hrs and maintain constant BT searches for FindMyMac)

 

[herb2k]

Also - This works to make the start up delay (before the apple logo appears) reduce to normal, when you are using aftermarket SSD:

How to 'bless' your drive

 

[cybazaar]

Looks like I may have bricked my Late 2013 MBP 15” in an attempt to patch the NVMe driver in the bootrom. The patching seemed to go fine with flashrom, following the steps exactly as described in the post in the wiki. However, the MacBook doesn’t boot. I even reversed the patch and rewrote the original (backed up) copy of the rom image back to the chip, but the MacBook still won’t boot.

Any suggestions on what I can try to revive the MacBook?

 

[tomernewyork]

I'd love to know the battery life on a 15" mid 2015 with a genuine 5th gen Apple NVMe fitted e.g 655-1994, MZ-KKW5120

Did you end up installing the genuine 655-1994 (or similar) upgrade? Are you happy with the results?

 

[cybazaar]

Late 2013 MacBook Pro Retina, 15-inch
Bootrom 1.6.0.0
macOS Catalina 10.15.5
Windows 10 Pro on Bootcamp

Installed Sabrent Rocket 2TB drive SB-ROCKET-2TB (the blue one) with the Sintech adapter. Install was easy following the information in this forum.

Used Carbon Copy Cloner and Winclone to backup the MacOS and Bootcamp partitions. However, to keep the OS/drive clean, ended up installing a fresh Catalina, and only restored data and applications from the CCC backup. Winclone failed to restore the Bootcamp partition. I kept getting a BOOT_DEVICE_INACCESSIBLE error that Winclone couldn't help resolve, so ended up installing fresh copy of Windows 10 Pro as well (which was easy).

Getting great speeds, 1318 MB/s write and 1355 MB/s read, more than double of what I had with the original Apple drive!

Of course, hibernation is an issue, so considering patching my bootrom, and have some questions:

1. Can I download the latest macOS Catalina installer on my own MacBook, and extract the donor firmware with the updated NVMe driver, or do I need a donor 2015 MacBook? (I don't understand why a donor 2015 MacBook might be necessary...)
2. After I patch my system ROM with the updated NVMe driver, would I need to repeat this process every time the stock Apple OS update changes the bootrom?
3. Where can I find a cheap J6100 adapter? All the ones I can find on Ebay are around $60, for a little flat cable!

Thanks in advance!

Answering my own questions here in case they are helpful to anyone else:

1. The macOS installer can be downloaded on any MacBook or obtained by any other means. (should have been obvious)
2. Looks like until Apple includes updated NVMe drivers in a new bootrom, we have to keep patching that driver, or not let the bootrom be upgraded (i.e., not install an OS upgrade unless it's been confirmed that it doesn't update the bootrom).
3. The J6100 adapter isn't necessary at least for some MacBooks. Through Steffinuss's post (https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ook-pro-ssd-to-m-2-nvme.2034976/post-28332895) I found that there are cheap ch341a SIP programmers that come with an SOIC8 clamp cable that does the trick. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07R5LPTYM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It takes some effort (a magnifying glass helps) to connect the clamp to the chip correctly.
[automerge]1591823192[/automerge]

Looks like I may have bricked my Late 2013 MBP 15” in an attempt to patch the NVMe driver in the bootrom. The patching seemed to go fine with flashrom, following the steps exactly as described in the post in the wiki. However, the MacBook doesn’t boot. I even reversed the patch and rewrote the original (backed up) copy of the rom image back to the chip, but the MacBook still won’t boot.

Any suggestions on what I can try to revive the MacBook?

I cleaned the MacBook logic board with some 99.9% isopropyl alcohol (after I had disconnected power and battery) in the area around the chip. I don't know if that fixed it or if it was something else, but the MacBook has booted up now. Will try to patch the bootrom again and report how that goes.

Update: I was able to repeat my bootrom flashing process, and this time without bricking the MacBook. The main difference was this time I had the Magsafe and the battery connector disconnected on the receiving system. Also, I clamped the cable on the receiving side chip, and then plugged the programmer into the USB port of the other system. Then read, read, read, check checksum consistency, update one of the dumps, write, disconnect the clamp first and then remove the programmer from the USB.

 

[Waughy]

3 sleep wake errors in the last 3 days. Usually after letting it sit overnight. 2014 model, hibernate mode 3, tcpkeepalive 0, everything else as it was standard. Looks like a full shutdown is the go every night. A shame Apple hasn't done anything to help us all out with this. Also a shame the Apple SSUBX drives are so expensive. I'd just go a 512Gb if it was worth it. Would still get the extra 2 links on my laptop, so performance would get an increase.

 

[cuatepotzo]

Hello everyone, I have a macbook pro mid 2014 A1502 (MacBookPro11,1), I want to upgrade 256GB SSD to 1TB. I wanted to ask if the Intel Optane Memory H10 SSD is compatible? Thank you.

 

[Needleroozer]

Hello all,

I've been working on upgrading my mid-2014 13" MacBook Pro (MacBookPro11,1) and thought I should share my success.
I'm using a 500GB HP EX900 drive with the short Sintech adapter, which came with tape pre-applied to the NVMe connector. Installing the pair went very simply, with the EX900's mounting notch perfectly aligning with the Mac's SSD standoff, as advertised.

I also opted to patch my bootrom (version 160.0.0.0) so that sleep would work with hibernatemode 25, following the guide in the wiki.
This wound up being a little trickier, since my Mac doesn't have the J6100 connector installed for some reason, and its EFI chip is not an SOIC-8 chip like the 15" models have. This meant that I couldn't use an SOIC-8 clip on it, but I was able to solder some 34AWG magnet wire onto the pins and get it recognized by a CH341a. (I later found out that, if I had desoldered the chip, it has the same spacing as the SOIC-8 and would have fit perfectly into the clip...)

I tried using the CH341a from macOS but wound up using a Linux laptop when flashrom was unable to find it. I read the bootrom out three times, verifying consistency with the md5sum and diff tools.

I used UEFITool to modify this bootrom but found that I needed to use an older version (0.24) in order to be able to modify a bootrom rather than just extract the NVMe driver. Once I downloaded this older version from the GitHub releases page, the patching went perfectly, and I was able to write and verify this new bootrom to my Mac.

The only other issue I encountered was in moving my files from my old Apple SSD to this new one. The guide linked in the wiki uses dd to backup the whole drive, byte-by-byte, but I was unable to restore this image to my new drive using dd, asr, or Disk Utility. I wound up just backing up the original drive using Time Machine and then restoring the new drive from that backup, using Apple's GUI tool.

Hibernation seems to work properly, and the laptop seems to boot up and wake from sleep just a little faster than before. I did some basic disk throughput tests and found that, while the read speeds saturate the two PCIe lanes at 1500Mbps, the write speeds are less consistent, with spikes up to 1230Mbps but typical performance around 300Mbps. I believe that this is the expected behavior for the EX900 due to its nature as a budget NVMe drive.

 

[Needleroozer]

Hello everyone, I have a macbook pro mid 2014 A1502 (MacBookPro11,1), I want to upgrade 256GB SSD to 1TB. I wanted to ask if the Intel Optane Memory H10 SSD is compatible? Thank you.

While I have not personally done this and would not recommend it (there are many other, cheaper SSDs that are guaranteed to work), it seems like the Optane SSD should be recognized as just a normal NVMe SSD by computers such as ours that don't use the 7th-generation Intel CPUs with which Optane was released (source).
The weird thing with the H10 is that it seems that it's actually two NVMe drives, one that's the fast Optane cache and one that's the normal QLC flash memory (source). So, while it's advertised as an x4 PCIe device, it's actually two x2 PCIe drives in a trenchcoat... Since the MacBookPro11,1 only has an x2 connection, it's possible that only one of them will actually show up, if any do at all.
In short, it might work, but there are a lot of other, simpler NVMe options that would be a whole lot less fuss.

 

[macpro_mid2014]

3 sleep wake errors in the last 3 days. Usually after letting it sit overnight. 2014 model, hibernate mode 3, tcpkeepalive 0, everything else as it was standard. Looks like a full shutdown is the go every night. A shame Apple hasn't done anything to help us all out with this. Also a shame the Apple SSUBX drives are so expensive. I'd just go a 512Gb if it was worth it. Would still get the extra 2 links on my laptop, so performance would get an increase.

Try to plug a memory stick in one of the USBs and let it mounted. Maybe, the computer does not hibernate.

 

[vince22]

Macosx Catalina 10.15.6 beta 2 looks promising as far hibernation battery loss, for over 9hrs still 100% batttery.
early 2015 Macbook Pro with short sintech/Sabrent rocket 1TB (blue/double sided).

 

[Intenditore]

early 2015 Macbook Pro

Which is 2013 year model (with GT 750m), right?

 

[desperex]

Not having to install the original Apple SSD to get a bootrom update is great news in my book. Are you running a MacBook with a NVMe drive?

Gatekeeper and MRT would be updated if a MacBook was not running a patched rom and original Apple SSD?

I'm asking because I don't know the answer.

I'm not surprised that Apple hasn't updated their bootrom to support NVMe drives. If they did and problems arose due to NMVe-related problems, they might be inundated with repair requests.

It's not uncommon in my experience that some Apple techs will not work on a machine that isn't 100% original.

Yeah, updated all stuff via Silent Knight right after.
And since I'm having nvme and want it to support hibernation I'd better stay with outdated rom for a while than lose nvme support with every OS update. But who cares

 

[cuatepotzo]

While I have not personally done this and would not recommend it (there are many other, cheaper SSDs that are guaranteed to work), it seems like the Optane SSD should be recognized as just a normal NVMe SSD by computers such as ours that don't use the 7th-generation Intel CPUs with which Optane was released (source).
The weird thing with the H10 is that it seems that it's actually two NVMe drives, one that's the fast Optane cache and one that's the normal QLC flash memory (source). So, while it's advertised as an x4 PCIe device, it's actually two x2 PCIe drives in a trenchcoat... Since the MacBookPro11,1 only has an x2 connection, it's possible that only one of them will actually show up, if any do at all.
In short, it might work, but there are a lot of other, simpler NVMe options that would be a whole lot less fuss.

Thank you very much for the help, I thought that maybe I could help improve speed by Optane technology, I am thinking of upgrading to an Intel 660p, an Adata XPG SX8200 Pro or a Toshiba Xg5-p M.2 2280, for the cost that is very similar to the Intel Optane. Which one could you recommend? for my macbook, thanks.